


Alice

by ellymango



Category: Ballerina | Leap! (2016)
Genre: Body Image, Child Abandonment, Fan theory, Flashbacks, Former roommates, Gen, Headcanon, Repressed Memories, Unplanned Pregnancy, implied prostitution, referenced relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-07
Updated: 2017-09-10
Packaged: 2018-12-25 01:16:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12025029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellymango/pseuds/ellymango
Summary: From her bright red hair and freckled nose to the way she smiled or held herself whilst dancing, Félicie reminded Odette of... someone. Who that someone was she could never quite pinpoint, and they always felt just out of her memory, lurking deep within her subconscious, until..."I keep meaning to ask, but where did you get that music box?""Oh, it was left in my cradle when I was abandoned..."And then she remembered.Oh God, she couldn't be, could she...?





	1. A Sneaking Suspicion

**Author's Note:**

> Yanno, even though I know what her voice sounds like, for some reason I imagined Odette as having an English accent whilst writing this.

Standing in front of her old friend’s door, Odette began to doubt if her assumption was even correct. Though it seemed too clean and perfect to wipe off as a coincidence, the feeling in the back of her mind kept telling her that she was over thinking, riding on a hunch and would only end up embarrassing herself.

Then again, it wasn’t as though her hunch was thinner than water. 

She shook herself to regain her confidence before knocking, immediately hearing footsteps on the other side, muffled angry words about who was visiting, and the door flew open.

It took a moment for the partially disfigured woman to recognise her. “Who the _Hell_ are...” She squinted, edging forward. “Odette? Is that you?”

Before she had time to reply, she had a pair of clawed raw hands on her shoulders. “It is you, isn’t it? God, you haven’t changed at all, have you?”

“Neither have you, Alice.” She had forgotten how her former roommate had the uncanny ability to make her feel as uncomfortable as possible as she was dragged into the pokey flat and ushered into the kitchen.

“So Bones, how you been keeping? It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

Odette scowled at hearing her old nickname, easing herself down into one of the kitchen chairs. “It has. And I’ve been well enough...” 

“Still have that limp I see. How on Earth do you do it? The sound of that bloody stick would drive me insane. _Tap, tap, tap,_ every time you walk!”

She winced at the interruption. “I do, yes. You get used to the sound eventually...” She raised an eyebrow as her eyes roved down to Alice’s burned hands. “Much like how you seem to have gotten used to your missing fingers.”

“Fair enough.” She fell down into the chair across the table, smiling a wide and rotten grin. “Still single as well I take it?”

“Actually no, I-“

“Ooh, so you finally found someone! Never thought I’d see the day...” Alice practically lunged across the table, grappling for Odette’s left hand. “No ring?” 

“Not yet...” She retracted her hand sharply. “We only got together quite recently.” 

“Ohh right.” She leant in, painfully and uncomfortably close to Odette’s face. “Does he... know?”

“Know what?” 

She eyed Odette from her waist up. “Y’know. That you’re barren.”

Odette groaned. “ _Yes_ , he does know about _that.” Still rubbing that old wound I see. God, she hasn’t changed a bit._

Alice jumped back in shock. “And he has no _problem_ with it?”

“He’s known for some time.”

“Brave man, brave man...” She suddenly seemed pensive. “Wait... is it that dancing boy you liked? The one with the big silly moustache?” She pulled back to think. “What was his name...? Louis something, wasn’t it? Louis the kilt fanatic?”

Odette sighed, eyes rolling and a not-so-subtle groan leaving her. “Yes, it’s him.”

“So ol’ Louis turned out to be into girls after all then, eh...” She pouted. “Wait, isn’t he a bit... out of your league now? I hear he’s a right bigwig choreographer and all that. How did you manage to pull that? I mean out of all the girls in the Opera for him to go for you...”

Odette ignored her last statement. “Well it’s a rather long story-”

“Ohh, that’s right, you have a job at the theatre, don’t you? ... You still have that job right? As a janitor?”

“Yes I do, I-”

Alice hooted with laughter. “I still can’t believe it! What ballet dancer in her right mind chooses to sweep the floors once she’s done training? No wonder you were always exhausted.”

Odette felt a very worn-down nerve spike in anger. “I don’t see why you’re laughing. It was better than having to sell myself, like _some_ people I know.”

That certainly changed her tune. “I had no choice!”

“Yet I somehow did.”

Alice’s face scrunched up, like a bulldog chewing a wasp. “You couldn’t have done it anyway. Some of the men I encountered- hah! They could have snapped your scrawny ass in two.” She jabbed Odette hard in the centre of her chest.

Odette slapped her hand, lips pursing in a desperate attempt to keep a reign on her weakening temper. “Maybe so.” She leaned in close enough to smell the stale alcohol on Alice’s breath. “But at least I didn’t end up in the family way like _you_ did.”

Alice stared hard at her, eyes hiding a flurry of disbelief and the pang of an old wound being reopened, and when she finally spoke her voice was little above a low, sickly growl. “How the Hell did you know...?”


	2. The Flashback

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> That night had never struck Odette as being particularly odd or significant, and honestly she'd forgotten about it until now. Now she realised just how significant that night may be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I mean I was going to have to write younger Odette sooner or later

_Eleven Years Earlier..._

Judging by how dark it was outside, Odette knew it had to be quite late by the time she crept into her dorm room. It was on nights like this when she started to question her own judgement, whether taking this job helping clean the stage and practice rooms after performing or rehearsing was honestly a good idea after all. But the alternative was... far from desirable. She’d take late nights and fatigue over that any day.

She collapsed onto her bunk, still wearing her cleaner’s apron and not bothering to pull the covers over her. It was too warm to sleep with covers, too warm to even sleep in clothes almost. But she was too tired to bother changing right now. If she woke up later due to being too warm, she’d change then.

She was barely awake when her roommate came in, mumbling under her breath as she always did about whatever inane chatter came to her mind first. She made little attempt to quieten herself as she changed, loudly and angrily rumpling her clothes and tossing them aside. 

Odette then noticed that she was talking to someone else, telling them to calm down, stop moving, that they’d be keeping her awake, despite her not having taken any notice of Odette’s presence.

_Must be drunk,_ Odette thought as her eyes rolled under their sleepy lids. Nothing new there. Alice always talked to herself when she was blind drunk. Oddly enough though, she couldn’t smell any alcohol, and the tone of her voice seemed... unusually soft. Tender. Not how her drunken roommate would sound at all. 

And then she turned sideways. 

She pulled her nightshirt on before Odette’s sleep-glazed eyes could fully process what looked off about her roommate, thought she knew for a fact she wasn’t supposed to look so... rotund.

She then said something whilst looking down at her body which stuck out in Odette’s mind. 

_“Lord, what am I going to do with you...”_

Odette called out to her, voice still soft and mumbly. “Who were you talking to?”

Alice shrieked. “Jesus _Christ Bones_ , you scared the _shit_ out of me.”

“Sorry.”

“Sorry my arse. Why are you still awake anyway?”

“You woke me up.”

Alice squinted. “Wait, why aren’t you changed?”

“I was too tired.” Deciding is was just about time to change into her nightgown, she heaved herself up, suddenly feeling a lot stickier than when she’d went to bed. She grimaced as she stripped off her musty clothes. 

As she changed, Odette could feel Alice eyeing her with a smirk. “What are you looking at?”

“They’re getting bigger.”

“What do you mean?”

Alice poked her left breast. “These. They’re too big.”

Odette flinched, instinctively covering her chest. “Piss off! They’re not that big at all.”

“Yes they are. I can see them.”

“So?”

_“So,_ if you have boobs they’ll throw you out. Common knowledge here.”

“No they won’t!” She shrunk back, lowering her protective arms, suddenly a lot more on edge. “They wouldn’t, would they?”

“’Course they would. Boobs will screw with your balance. That’s why everyone here is flat. Except you...” She aimed another jab at Odette’s chest, which was swiftly dodged. "Yanno Bones, I hear the fat on your chest is the first to go when you lose weight. Maybe you should lose a bit more." 

"Haven't I lost enough already?" After all, she was known as “Bones” for a reason.

"Not if I can see your tits. Lose more!"

Odette felt a tired nerve snap. “You’re a fine one to be lecturing me on my weight. How about you lose that pot-belly first?” Her revenge jab at Alice’s protruding stomach was slapped away.

“Hey! Watch it!”

“What’s the matter Alice? You can dish it out, but you can’t take it yourself? Sounds about right.” 

Alice growled something at her, shielding her bulge from any future attacks. “Piss off.”

Odette huffed, yanking on her night gown with a disgruntled flourish and getting back into bed. She threw a “Goodnight” over her shoulder, not caring when it wasn’t returned and settled back to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Are her boobs too big? Who knows. All I know is that she has 'em ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡° )


	3. The Reveal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Having recounted her flashback, Alice finally comes clean to Odette.

“... and that’s how I know.”

Alice had been silent throughout Odette’s recollection, staring at the grimy floor with poverty glazed eyes and sucking on the few teeth left in her mouth. “I suppose I couldn’t keep it a secret forever, huh? It was gonna come back sooner or later.”

“I actually have a bit of an idea who the father was. He was a client, relatively young, a sailor if I remember rightly. We got to talking, hah, we were the only redheads in the bar, and after... well, you can guess what happened.”

“I don’t remember when or how I found out I was expecting, but I remember panicking. I remember thinking _“what am I going to do?”_ day in and day out, it was just constantly there right at the back of my mind... it was scary, yanno? I was young and broke, having a baby and well... you surely remember what the Opera did to girls who found themselves like _that_.”

“I made a decision pretty quickly. I’d hide it for as long as I could, then go back home to the coast, have it there and... leave it there at a convent or something. I was actually suggested an orphanage run by the church and that’s where I left her.”

Odette raised her eyebrows. “You... had a little girl then.”

“I did.” Alice leaned back, letting her memories return. “She was a beautiful little thing, she was. Had red hair, a freckled nose, just like me... didn’t catch her eyes though.”

“Did you... name her?”

“... I didn’t. I felt like I’d be getting too attached to her if I gave her a name, yanno? Not that _you’d_ ever understand.” 

Odette winced at that last sentence. “Carry on.”

“Oh, yeah...”

“I managed to hide it much longer than I thought. I think by the time you saw me that night I was about... five months into it? I can’t remember. I was around halfway though. Hah, I think it was your “pot belly” jibe that made me realise I was showing, and that it was time to go home.”

“While I was out there I... thought of running away. Just being away from the Opera and living out there, maybe on a farm or in a bakers or something. You miss a place once you’ve been away for too long, yanno? And when you go back you just want to stay there forever...”

“Why didn’t you?”

She sighed, blinking furiously. “They all knew me. Maybe mum or dad told them but everybody back there knew I was a dancing girl. The people out there weren’t very approving to say the least, especially when they saw the state I was in. It was pretty hard finding an inn to stay at.”

“Ah.”

“I eventually found an older couple who took me in. The wife was a former nurse, thank goodness. She was the one who delivered the baby, and... well, she was the one who suggested the orphanage I chose. Said she knew one of the Sisters there, that they’d been childhood friends, all that malarkey. I just hope she was a good soul, yanno? Some of them nuns can be pretty nasty.”

“Did you... leave anything with her?”

“I did. You remember my old music box?” 

Odette nodded, hand slipping into the deep pocket of her apron and pulling out said old music box. “You mean this one?”

Alice grappled for the box, turning it over in her clawed hands, lifting the lid, fiddling with the key and inspecting every detail with eyes wide as an owl’s. “Where... on _Earth_ did you get this, Bones?”

“It’s my daughter’s.”

“ _Your_ daughter’s...?" She snorted. "Oh come on Odette, we both know you’re more barren than a desert, stop trying to-”

Odette raised her brows slightly, recognising Alice’s usual tactic for trying to avoid a subject. “Well, she’s not _quite_ my daughter. I found her on the street and took her in.”

“Well, look at you, Missus “I hate kids”! Taking in the waifs and strays of Paris now, are you?” She was getting nervous, it seemed.

“Well I’ve only taken in her so far, and I can’t say I had much of a choice. She very much barged her way into my life.” Odette reclaimed the music box, and waited for a suitable time before continuing. “But the box is hers. She told me it was in her basket when she was abandoned...”

“... Come again?”

“She escaped an orphanage.”

She let what she said sink in, watching as Alice absorbed her words and slowly realised what her old roommate was insinuating. “You... you don’t suppose she’s really mine, do you?”

“If I didn’t think that, I wouldn’t have come. The music box was what got me thinking. I just swore I’d seen it somewhere before... and it was only when I remembered when I realised how much like you she was. The way she smiles, the way she moves, the way she asks far too many questions and annoys me to no end some days...”

“Ha, that’s my girl alright.” Her small smile turned melancholy. “What’s... her name?”

“Félicie.”

“Pretty. She has your last name then?”

“Oh, no, she was given another one at the orphanage she says.”

“Figures. Bet she can’t pronounce yours.”

Odette rolled her eyes at the old jibe. “She can’t, no.”

“Think you were the only one who could say your name right...” She drummed her remaining fingers on the table, thinking of which question she wanted to ask next. “What’s she like? Is she cute? Sweet? Kind?”

Odette sat pensively, trying to sum up her feeling as perfectly yet concisely as possible.

“She’s... she’s _wonderful_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stay tuned for when I try and write Félicie and Alice meeting for the first time!
> 
> .... Hopefully it won't be too long 
> 
> Still you would not believe how much fun I had writing this oh my lord

**Author's Note:**

> I know I keep forgetting to do this but big shout-out to Papergardener for beta reading all my fic!


End file.
